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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Coffee Loaf With Orange Frosting

Coffee loaf with orange frosting

With oranges in season, it's only fair that nothing edible from the fruit goes wasted! I make candied zest in small batches and a bit of the zest takes the recipe to another level. Just a little effort but what a delightful change! So when I saw the picture of a tea loaf in the latest issue of BBC Good Food magazine (India), I couldn't wait to get started by adding a few twists of my own. This is simple to make and if you are a regular here you know that's the kind of cooking I usually stick to.

Instead of tea, I used instant coffee and instead of sultanas, a handful of dried cranberries went in. I love using dried cranberries particularly in chocolate cakes. The contrast in colours and taste makes it even better. The recipe had muscovado sugar but since I didn't have it in stock I made do with caster sugar.Ingredients: 225 ml milk2 tbs instant coffee100 grams raisins80 grams dried cranberries 100 grams butter100 grams caster sugar1 egg225 grams flour1 tsp baking powderJuice and zest of 1 orangeFor the frosting: 125 grams soft butter200 grams icing sugarJuice of 1 orange

Heat the milk in a pan and let it come to near-boiling point.Take it off the gas and stir in the instant coffee. Leave to infuse for about 10 minutes.Add in the dried fruits into the coffee/milk mix.Cover, and set aside for an hour.Heat the oven to 180C. Grease a 900 gram loaf tin and line the base with greaseproof paper.Beat the butter and the sugar until creamy, then beat in 1 egg.Sieve the flour with the baking powder and fold in the same along with the fruit mixture in alternate batches.Add the juice and the zest of an orange.Spoon the mixture into the tin. Level the surface with a spoon and bake for an hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.Leave to cool in the tin then transfer to a serving platter.For the frosting, beat the butter and the sugar then add the juice of an orange till creamy.Frost the top (and the sides if you wish) and leave to set for an hour. Decorate with more orange zest.

I reduced the temperature to 160C in the last 15 minutes of cooking as the cake had browned well. It took 50 minutes to be done. I'm glad I had the candied zest ready to splurge on the frosting. This loaf was indeed a joy to create and I think a few more orange recipes would do justice to the fruit as well as this season.:)